Maya Wiley

Maya Wiley "is the founder and director of the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy advocacy organization which works to dismantle structural racism. A civil rights attorney and policy advocate with over fifteen years of experience, Ms. Wiley graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1989. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1986. She has litigated, lobbied the US Congress and developed programs to transform structural racism in the US and in South Africa. Prior to founding the Center for Social Inclusion, Ms. Wiley was a senior advisor on race and poverty to the Director of U.S. Programs of the Open Society Institute, and helped develop and implement the Open Society Foundation -- South Africa’s Criminal Justice Initiative. She has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Department, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. in the Poverty and Justice Program and the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. She has served on the Boards of the Institute on Race and Poverty and Human Rights Watch. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the Tides Network Board and as an advisory board member of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. She is a contributing author to the National Urban League's 2006 State of Black America, and has authored a chapter on Race, Equity and Land Use Planning in Columbia, South Carolina in a forthcoming book to be published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press." [1]